g there with Mount under the oak, I saw Sir George and Magdalen
Brant leave the house and stroll down the path towards the stream. Sir
George was still speaking in his quiet, earnest manner; her eyes were
fixed on him so that she scarce heeded her steps, and twice long sprays
of sweetbrier caught her gown, and Sir George freed her. But her eyes
never wandered from him; and I myself thought he never looked so
handsome and courtly as he did now, in his officer's uniform and
black cockade.

Where their pathway entered the alders, below the lane, they vanished
from our sight; and, leaving Mount to watch I went back to the house, to
search it thoroughly from cellar to the dark garret beneath the eaves.

At two o'clock in the afternoon Sir George and Magdalen Brant had not
returned. I called Mount into the house, and we cooked some eggs and
johnny-cake to stay our stomachs. An hour later I sent Mount out to make
a circle of a mile, strike the Iroquois trail and hang to it till dark,
following any traveller, white or red, who might be likely to lead him
towards the secret trysting-place of the False-Faces.

Left alone at the house, I continued to rummage, finding nothing of
importance, however; and towards dusk I came out to see if I might
discover Sir George and Magdalen Brant. They were not in sight. I waited
for a while, strolling about the deserted garden, where a few poppies
turned their crimson disks towards the setting sun, and a peony lay dead
and smelling rank, with the ants crawling all over it. In the mellow
light the stillness was absolute, save when a distant white-throat's
silvery call, long drawn out, floated from the forest's darkening edge.

The melancholy of the deserted home oppressed me, as though I had
wronged it; the sad little house seemed to be watching me out of its
humble windows, like a patient dog awaiting another blow. Beacraft's
worn coat and threadbare vest, limp and musty as the garments of a dead
man, hung on a peg behind the door. I searched the pockets with
repugnance and found a few papers, which smelled like the covers of
ancient books, memoranda of miserable little transactions--threepence
paid for soling shoes, twopence here, a penny there; nothing more. I
threw the papers on the grass, dipped up a bucket of well-water, and
rinsed my fingers. And always the tenantless house watched me furtively
from its humble windows.

The sun's brassy edge glittered above the blue chain of hills as